


Lachryphagy

by draculard



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Compliant, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Takes Place After Eggsy's Wedding, Traumatized Harry Hart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 14:50:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18523759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: A butterfly will, from time to time, seek sustenance from someone else's pain. The sodium found in a mammal's tears can be collected by male butterflies and transferred to the females during mating, like a wedding gift. They share it between each other with little knowledge of the source, with no care whatsoever for the hurt that caused it.Harry has been feasted on by butterflies before.





	Lachryphagy

**1980**

He lies on his back in a break between the rainfalls. The humidity is oppressive; it soaks through his dress shirt and pins him to the ground. When he stands, he knows there will be wet, green leaves stuck to his arms, and caterpillars in his hair, and streaks of mud across his back. But nothing in the world could make him move. Not now.

* * *

**2015**

After all is said and done, Harry still sees butterflies, from time to time. He sees them in his garden around the pink blossoms of milkweed, carrying its vanilla scent toward him on their wings. He sees them in his house, on his bathroom mirror with their feet against the glass. When he looks at his reflection, the butterflies are packed so thick that he can’t even see his eyes.

He sees them at Eggsy’s wedding, sparse and colorful and small. Each glimpse is so fleeting he can’t be sure it’s real.

When he was a child, there were butterflies everywhere in the spring. When he was a young man, he couldn’t drive through the countryside without catching butterflies in the grille of his car, and he remembers how it made him weep, the first time he extricated a perfect, severed, iridescent wing from the metal rods.

They’re harder to find now. The world is changing; the things Harry loves are fading away.

But still, he sees a butterfly caught in Eggsy’s hair when he leans forward to kiss Tilde, and Harry can’t be sure.

He can’t be sure.

* * *

**1980**

He knows it when he sees it fluttering overhead, its wings large and blue enough to blot out the sky. He can quote Fruhstorfer’s description of it from heart; he’s had it memorized since he was a boy.

It must have come here for the crystal waterfall; he saw it alone, perched on the rocks near the water, before he laid down. Now it comes sailing over to him, hovering just above his eyes.

 _Morpho anaxibia._ It coasts over him, seeming almost not to move, and Harry watches it, frozen in place. The wetness in his eyes turns cold, his tears forgotten in the face of this.

The butterfly comes closer, until its feet are whispering against Harry’s cheek, its wings so large and close they seem to have changed color, to a darker, night-sky blue. He feels its proboscis against his skin, sipping up every last bit of sodium it can.

Harry lies still. He barely breathes. In time, he sees the sweep of smaller, brighter colors above him, too fragmented to identify — brilliant oranges and reds, asymmetric stripes, black dots. A wing dips close enough to his eye for him to count the scales.

They gather only on his face, circling his eyes like a tribal mask.

They drink his tears.

He lets them.

* * *

**2015**

“Harry?” Eggsy says. His voice is uncertain; he’s nothing but a blurry spot in the corner of Harry’s eye, a mess of medals and tassels and refinery. “Are you crying?”

It would be beneath Harry’s dignity to deny it. Still, he doesn’t turn to face Eggsy, doesn’t allow him a closer look at Harry’s face. He tracks the butterfly in the room, the Giant Sicklewing, _achlyodes busirus rioja_. Native to Brazil. A muddy brown color like a blot of infection on an open wound, like a mite floating in his missing eye.

It’s not real. He knows it isn’t real.

“Harry,” Eggsy says again. His voice is softer now. Harry feels the hand cupping his cheek, skin soft and gentle against his own, but he still doesn’t look Eggsy’s way.

He wants to give something — anything. He wants to be useful again. He wants to be necessary, even in some small, anonymous, universal way. Useful like he was as a young man, when his sorrow over his mother’s death overtook him in the rainforest, when he laid on his back and cried, when the creatures he was there to study flocked to him and cleaned his face, just looking coldly for nutrition.

Something he could supply.

“Don’t cry, Harry,” Eggsy says. His thumb brushes away a stray tear as it blazes down Harry’s cheek. Harry says nothing — ~~well, what can he say? What could he do, but repeat all he said on the plane, and hope this time that Eggsy understands?~~ — and the tears don’t stop. They come from him relentlessly, silent and strangely cold.

The Sicklewing comes to rest on Eggsy’s head, blending in neatly with his hair. Harry watches it land, and he sees Eggsy watching him, and he isn’t surprised when Eggsy pulls him closer and murmurs, “Harry, are you seeing butterflies again?”

He feels the press of Eggsy’s lips against his skin, a chaste kiss, as soft and gentle as the touch of a butterfly’s wing. He imagines Eggsy can taste nothing but salt.

 _I’m fine, Eggsy,_ Harry wants to say. He takes a shallow breath that shudders in his chest, feels Eggsy’s arms tighten around him. He raises a trembling hand and tries to dry what remains of his tears before Eggsy can kiss them away.

 _I’m fine,_ he wants to say. _I’m fine._


End file.
